Monopoly Square 7: Jail

So, is jail a property, then? No, of course not. You can’t buy it, can you? Still, it’s a specific square, and one which it is possible to draw. How? Well, London has never been short of prisons. Off the top of my head there were/are the Clink Prison (from which the slang term, being in the clink comes) the Fleet Prison, the Marshalsea Prison, the King’s Bench Prison, the Millbank Penitentiary,  Pentonville Prison, Holloway Prison, Brixton Prison, Wormwood Scrubs Prison and not to mention the Tower of London. But I wanted to sketch possibly the most notorious of all London’s prisons, Newgate.

Newgate prison was established by King Henry 2^nd in 1188. It came to take over part of the original Newgate, a ceremonial fortified gateway leading into the City of London. Amazingly Newgate Jail was still operating right at the start of the 20^th century, though it closed in 1902 and was demolished a year later.

Charles Dickens had a thing about prisons. It’s not surprising when you consider that his father John Dickens was imprisoned in the Marshalsea for a period during Dickens’ childhood. The Marshalsea is the backdrop to “Little Dorrit” and other novels he wrote feature episodes in the Fleet Prison and also the Kings Bench Prison. However Newgate recurs throughout his writing quiz, from an early article in “Sketches by Boz” through “Oliver Twist”, right up to “Great Expectations”, arguably his greatest work. His first historical novel “Barnaby Rudge” concerned the Gordon Riots, during which Newgate was attacked and partially destroyed.

Waddingtons (sensibly in my opinion) decided to change as little as possible about the original board, and did very little other than replacing the names on the properties with London locations and the dollar prices with sterling. Free parking used an American jalopy, while the policeman ordering the unlucky player to go to jail looks about as British as the Stars and Stripes or the Statue of Liberty. This is probably why Jail (just visiting) ad Go To Jail are spelled thusly rather than the more traditionally British word Gaol. Some experts believe that Monopoly certainly helped Jail become far more commonly used in the UK.